Customize LaunchPad Folders with Emoji

You may know by now that Mac OS X Lion has Emoji support, which is easily accessible in most applications. This brings a wide range of icons and emoticons to the Mac, and some of them are perfect to customize the appearance of LaunchPad folder names. Here’s how:

Open TextEdit and then hit Command+Option+T to bring up the ‘Special Character’ tool

Select “Emoji” from the list on the left and then select a sub category, find an emoticon or icon you want to use and double-click it to make it appear in the blank TextEdit window

Highlight and copy the emoji icon in TextEdit so that it is stored within the clipboard

Click to open the folder you want to edit, then double-click on the folder name to make changes

Use your mouse cursor or the arrow keys to go to the beginning of the word, and hit Command+P to paste the Emoji icon into the folder name

Click out of the folder to set the change

Removing the emoji icon from the folder name is the same as deleting any other character. This is actually an older tip from the iOS world but LaunchPad and iOS’s SpringBoard are so similar that it works in Lion.

These Emoji icons tend to look their best on larger screens mostly because the LaunchPad icons are larger, something that nobody has yet figured out how to control independently – although the LaunchPad icons are universally larger in Mac OS X 10.7.2 developer betas, there is still no way to adjust the size.